In balancing the accounts of domestic service and in asking what has been accomplished in the past ten years in the direction of improvement, it must be frankly said at the outset that it is probably just as difficult to-day to secure good household employees as it was ten years ago,--perhaps even more difficult; that wages are probably even higher than at that time; that the service rendered is no more efficient; that recommendations are no more reliable; that cooks still have tempers; that coachmen sometimes drink; that maids have “followers;” that nursery girls gossip in the parks with policemen; that new employees engaged fail to keep the engagement; that valuable china is broken, and that household supplies are wasted. But if the work of these years has not borne immediate fruit, it has not been without results that will sometime come to fruition. These results are seen in the distinct, positive, and direct improvement in the literature of the subject; flippancy is giving place to seriousness in considering the relations of mistress and maid; historical and statistical investigations of the question have multiplied and become more thorough and elaborate; substantial facts are supplanting sentimentality and visionary theories in the discussions on the subject; a diagnosis of the case is being made, and the prescription of a remedy is withheld while the examination is progressing; humble-mindedness and willingness to learn are now found where formerly there were absolute certainty and positiveness of conviction in dealing with the question; in a definite way an improvement in legislation has been made, disreputable methods of employment agencies have been exposed, social oases have been planted in desert places, and, in general, a concrete method of procedure has been substituted for polite abstractions and innocuous generalities. All this means that a long step forward has been taken within the past decade. The great improvement in the character of the general literature of the subject is seen in the gradual disappearance of the fault-finding, the sentimental, the goody-goody magazine article, and the appearance in its place of genuine contributions to the subject, like those recently made to the “Atlantic Monthly” by Miss Jane Seymour Klink and Miss Frances A. Kellor. Miss Jane Addams in “A Belated Industry”[1] has dealt most thoroughly with the economic phases of the subject, as has Mrs. Mary Roberts Smith in her admirable article on “Domestic Service; the Responsibility of Employers.”[2] Mr. Bolton Hall has set forth most vigorously the employee’s side of the case in “The Servant Class on the Farm and in the Slums;”[3] while a symposium on the subject by a group of men has recently discussed in an impartial manner many of the difficulties of the situation.